peak oil and re-urbanization (idea)

It would be bad form to start a writeup as long as this one
without a quick explanation of the topics within. This is a
writeup that is mostly going to discuss American cities, but
the precedents in it apply pretty well to the social patterns
of most developed countries.

Peak oil is a thing that is going to happen. People are going
to be arguing for a long time about just how significant its
impact is going to be; a lot of people think it's the end of
the world, and others (me included) think that it's just a
force for strong change. The idea is that demand for gas is
increasing parabolically, but the rate at which it can be
produced is not increasing accordingly. Neither is the rate of discovery. "Peak oil"
refers to the point at which demand begins to overtake supply.
It's pretty simple. In the US, even the Bush administration is
starting to get concerned about this; gas prices have been
steadily climbing for months and are starting to accelerate at
worrisome rates.

When the supply of gas becomes and remains scarce,
American cities will visibly compress, and many suburbs will
experience rapid depopulation.

Not everyone is going to agree with this idea. For one thing,
it has become pretty clear that the price of gas does not
matter to most American drivers. People are going to pay
whatever gas costs, until it becomes truly backbreaking. Even
if gas were to rise to US$5 or $10/gallon, people would still pay it.
Most people's driving habits would start to become
conservative, but very few Americans would give up their cars
at this point. What needs to be considered is the point of
restriction where, as in the 1970s, the public cannot be
supplied with an adequate amount of gas and becomes unable to
purchase it.

Immediate effects

Public transit will obviously see some major gains at this
point. An excellent opportunity to observe the consequences of the disabling of automotive traffic occured March 26, 2004, in Southern
New England, when an oil tanker crashed and caught fire on Interstate 95 crossing the city of
Bridgeport, Connecticut1 and caused such severe structural
damage to the highway that a long segment of the freeway had to be closed entirely. The public
response was poor in what was already an extremely car-dependent area, but
services quickly became available. The lack of adequate
alternate corridors (notably the already-congested Merritt Parkway some distance
to the north, which could not accomodate large vehicles) led
to an expansion of local rail service. Shore Line East already
operated along Long Island Sound, but Amtrak also redirected
several of its Northeast Corridor trains to make commuter
stops in order to increase mobility.

The Bridgeport disaster only lasted for a little more than a
week. If such an event occured on the long term, the
development of transit would be more rapidly spurred. A
decline in passenger vehicle traffic would allow better usage
of existing road corridors by buses and vans, but a growth in
rail transit could also be expected. As gas prices continued
to rise (even with reduced automotive traffic, oil demand is
well spoken-for in agriculture and industry), the residential
areas near transit stations and corridors would quickly become
the most desirable housing in suburban areas.

Long-term effects

The central city would remain largely unaffected by a spike in
gas prices. Transit utilization would improve, but the general
proximity of essential services and employment to residential
areas in a dense city allows car-free existence. In New York
City, 63.2%2 of the population uses transit or
walks to work. In Boston, the equivalent number is 45.3%. Even in less dense cities,
the potential for infill exists -- by contrast, 18.5% of
Atlanta's population uses transit or walks to work. In Los Angeles, it's only 13.8%, due to the lack of transit infrastructure. Los Angeles would get hurt.

Essentially, what can be expected to occur is the gradual urbanization of
formerly suburban areas. Transit lines connecting these
suburbs essentially evolve into an intercity rail network.
These smaller "transit villages" are often compact enough to
allow pedestriantraffic to suffice for the vast majority of
commuters.

Dependent towns

Essentially all American cities are surrounded by a web of
suburbs and freeways or high-traffic arterial roads. The
Boston metropolitan area provides a useful case study due to
the fairly effective transit network and the dense urban core.
Although only 50.7% of the city's residents drive to work, in
the urban area3 78.7% drive, either alone or in a
carpool. In fact, nearly every town within 10 miles of the
city center (the exceptions being the beltway cities of Woburn
and Waltham, and the city of Cambridge, arguably part of the
same core economy) sends more workers to Boston than to
destinations within the town. (One suburb, Belmont, sends more
workers to Boston AND Cambridge, individually, than it
keeps.)

These dependent towns are the best way to measure the suburban
landscape created by a city, and, conversely, are the towns
most likely to contract or be eliminated entirely by a
long-term gasolineshortage. The inner core of suburbs is more
likely to see positive development (as it has already begun to do, in
most American cities).

New Urbanism has been a rising philosophy in the United States
and in Europe, essentially by extolling the benefits of urban
living in terms of increased social interaction, cultural
development, and the available of both essential services
(food, utilities) and nonessentials (entertainment, etc.).
There is a growing trend among Americans under thirty years
old of all social classes to migrate to the city, one that
would almost certainly encourage the development discussed
here.

Urbanization provides the simplest solution to a gas crisis,
and also creates the potential for agricultural and industrial
production in vacated suburban tracts. Improved land use
patterns are one pleasant consequence of this development, as
is the infusion of commercial development into areas that are
now strictly residential.

Preparation

It's tough to accept a doomsday theory, even with a crisis as
disturbing as peak oil. Alternative energy could be capable of
saving the day, as well; however, it would be in the nation's
best interests to develop contingency plans should the growing
voices in the scientific and economic communities be
correct.

The question of suburban disinvestment is a difficult one --
as the demand for houses at long distances from employment
centers decreases, the ability to sell those same properties
diminishes as well. Pre-emptive government intervention offers
one solution; subsidizing both new landlords and the
construction of new, multiple-unit housing in less densely-populated
areas of American cities would both ease this transition and
improve the current lifestyles in these cities, as would
keeping rights-of-way available for future transit
development.

American cities have many, many issues left to deal with that
would not be mitigated by sudden population growth. These
include crime, poverty, and declining school systems, all
problems that the nation has not addressed well in fifty
years. Do some research. Get the information that might matter
if changes start to happen.